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I'm starting to think LEGO is evil
- javanix 15y agoLook: I will fully admit that these sets are really, really cool. My son is getting a gigantic Millenium Falcon set from Santa this year (DON’T TELL) and both my wife and I are excited to play with it too. But it’s a model kit. We will put it together once and we will play with it a lot and that will be that. It won’t get remixed, won’t get hacked. Eventually it’ll come apart and be put away and not rebuilt because 1000 pieces is a pain in the ass. This doesn't make any sense to me. Why on earth wouldn't you mix those pieces in with the rest of the pieces you already have from sets you've already disassembled? Sure, the marketing is a little much these days but unless I am sadly mistaken all the pieces still fit together like they did 30 years ago.
- dgabriel 15y agoI think what he's saying is that he won't rebuild the Millenium Falcon, that the pieces will get scattered and used for other stuff. That's how it goes in our house. The set gets built very quickly, and just as quickly is dismantled and used for bigger, more creative projects. Wait -- no I see that he won't hack it. I wonder why not??
- sliverstorm 15y agoAs a kid I found with some of the predesigned kits, the result was distinctly cooler and more sophisticated than anything I'd ever be able to come up with. As a result I was always loathe to dismantle them. Darth Vader's Tie fighter, for example. It was much easier to tear apart my own creations because I could make something better.
- T-hawk 15y agoThat's probably pretty well accounted for in Lego Group's design and marketing philosophy. They have a vested interest in getting bricks "locked up" in creations that are too cool to take apart. Once you've done that, how do you build something else? Buy more Lego sets, of course!
- azernik 15y agoI remember actually finding it very easy (and fun!) to hack my stupendously detailed X-wing LEGO set when I was little; the main difference was that the mix-and-match would generally take place with larger units (partial assemblies from smaller "model-set" type sets) or involve adding little bits coming off of things (flames from some fantasy castle set went onto the barrels of some generic set and made extra rocket engines to go onto my X-wing!) On a side note, I remember a LOT more of my childhood play than I thought.
- amirmc 15y agoI've noticed that some of new Lego sets have very specific pieces. Not really the kind you can mix and match between sets as in the 'old days'.
- CountHackulus 15y agoThis kind of thing was popular during the LEGO "dark ages" in the early 2000s but has really died out as of late. The Millenium Falcon that's being referred to has very few, if any, unique parts. LEGO has really gone back to its roots in the past 2 or 3 years, especially with the AWESOME creator series.
- brudgers 15y agoUnique pieces are great for remixing once one stops imposing the idea of sets upon Legos. If they don't all wind up intermingled, an adult is probably in charge.
- cschmidt 15y agoIt is hard psychologically to realize you can never built the set as intended again. You end up lots of sets in big ziplocs. We've finally moved most of our son's legos into a single big bin, but he was opposed to it for a long time.
- zokier 15y agoOne problem (afaik) is that the pieces are more and more specialised. A single regular lego piece can be anything. Look at the old ad; almost all pieces shown are regular rectangular pieces. And it even says Universal Building Set. But now you just get 1000 distinctly "millenium falcon" pieces.
- iy56 15y agoExcept that's not true at all. http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/4504-1 http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/4504-1 is the brick list for the Millienium Falcon set. The minifigures are clearly specific to the Star Wars franchise, but aside from the minifig accessories and maybe half a dozen pieces that have decorative patterns, everything else is quite generic. I remember hearing that there's even an official Lego policy against introducing new pieces unless they have 3 different sets to put them in.
- pyre 15y agoWhen I was a kid, I would have loved all of the specific sets that they have now. Why? Because it increases the possibilities of what you can build. Those 'specific pieces' are mix-and-match with other Lego blocks.
- Poiesis 15y agoSeconded. There's no way in hell my kids would keep the pieces from one model together, anyway. We probably have tons of "unique" pieces, but let me tell you, they all get remixed just the same. Another reason to not keep them as kits: all Legos eventually are considered communal in our house after a certain period. It was just too hard to keep track of whose little orange brick it was that they were fighting over. This Christmas (don't tell!) they're getting five pounds of bulk bricks. Also, no kidding, this for storage: http://www.harborfreight.com/mobile-double-sided-floor-rack-95551.html http://www.harborfreight.com/mobile-double-sided-floor-rack-... . The mess was getting to be a problem.
- brudgers 15y agoIt won't get remixed because at $140 from Amazon, the author will impose adult values upon the way in which the child uses it. As he notes, he no longer sees it as a toy but as a model kit...and the use - or rather non-use will reflect his view of it as a collectable rather than a bunch of parts. In all fairness, I went through some of the same thing before I came to a more sensible position - now everything gets remixed to my child's content. They aren't mine after all. I played with Legos in the era of the ad, and I was completely blown away the first time I went shopping for Legos with my child. They are just orders of magnitude better due to the massive increases in diversity of pieces and far more thoughtful assembly of sets. Indeed, I have built far more stuff as an adult than I ever did as a child - and my child has had far more entertainment from Legos than I ever did despite the massive competition from Cable TV and console games as well as far more time spent reading and completing homework. BTW, the author's complaints about tie ins is a bit ironic given his tradition of buying Advent sets.
- cubicle67 15y agoMy friend's daughter, 8, has this kit[0] and it's one of the most awesome play kits ever. She's already added a heap of extra modifications to hers, and only yesterday it was transporting a load of camels for Princess Tamina(?) who happens to be from Prince of Persia, I think [0] I'm assuming it's 7965 http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/7965_Millennium_Falcon http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/7965_Millennium_Falcon
- ericabiz 15y agoAs a girl geek who grew up on Legos, this makes me really, really sad. From the NPR article linked to from the article above: "Lego also consciously aimed for boy customers when it embarked on its stunning turnaround. Boys were easier to sell to than girls." headsmash "The new Lego girl minifigures have names like Stephanie, Olivia, and Emma, and the building sets include a veterinary clinic, a hairdressing salon, a horse academy and a clinic." We need more women scientists, girl geeks, etc. And for every person who loves to say "But boys and girls are just different!", there's a stunning example of sexist stereotypes embedded in the very things we buy our kids because our generation cherished them too... (By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument that girls being raised to love pink and hate math is societal, not genetic, read "Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference". It's pretty eye-opening, and has plenty of proof to back up its assertions.)
- dmm 15y ago> We need more women scientists Are you a scientist?
- adriand 15y agoAre you capable of realizing that your comment is unhelpful and does nothing to advance the conversation?
- dmm 15y agoNo, I don't understand why my comment does nothing to advance the conversation. The poster ericabiz says the US needs more women scientists and I asked her if she was a scientist. If not, I was going to ask her why she wasn't. EDIT: I don't give a damn what ericabiz does. I wanted to know whether she really believed toys or suggestive advertising or whatever was really to blame for the lack of women in science. Because I think there are some other reasonable possibilities, for example, that science is a shitty career with huge uncertainty. A person with the skills and inclination to be a scientist can easily be a doctor/surgeon, vet, engineer, etc and have much better career potential. BURGERBRAIN: LOL guess I wasn't thinking. Good thing you are here to spread sarcastic bullshit around.
- pkamb 15y agoThat cops-and-robbers LEGO advent calendar is pretty weird. I still have this guy hanging on my tree: http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/1627-1.jpg http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/1627-1.jpg
- tlrobinson 15y agoI remember that guy! But I think he got assimilated into the large box of LEGO in my parents' basement.
- joelhooks 15y agoThe BrikCrate has changed how my kids approach Lego. It was completely "build the set, forget about it" prior to installing it. Now they build like crazy in free form. http://www.brikcrate.com/ http://www.brikcrate.com/ Our daughter enjoys building too.
- dgabriel 15y agoWe just have three enormous rubbermaid bins with lids. Half the fun is searching for the right piece, and possibly finding an old lollypop stuck to it. The sound of kid hands pawing through a vat of legos is awesome.
- joelhooks 15y agoIt's true, one person's "half the fun" is another's "most of the suck"
- someotheridiot 15y agoI'm waiting for the day I have enough to do a Scrooge McDuck and swim through mine :)
- jrockway 15y agoI think the key is to remind you kids that once you've built something according to the instructions and you're bored, it's time to take it apart and build something else. I remember playing with a lot of LEGO kits when I was a kid, and I always did this. It's true that, like coloring books, building from kits discourages creativity. But that's easy to fix with something called parenting. Let the instructions be an inspiration, not a prescription. (And, it's not a bad skill to be able to follow instructions. I hear people on forums like HN complaining about how difficult it is to build IKEA furniture. If they played with LEGO when they were a kid, they'd probably be able to build their bookshelf too :)
- potatolicious 15y agoTake a look at modern Lego kits - this is no longer really possible. Half of the pieces are now completely custom pieces that will only ever fit in one way. Gone are the Lego kits where just about all the pieces will recycle into your future creations.
- EdwardMSmith 15y agoYa know, as a father of a 7yo boy and a 9yo girl who together have put in about 40 hours of lego building in the last week alone, using lego from my childhood as well as a dozen kits purchased in the last 5 years or so, this simply isn't true. Its not true that the pieces will only ever fit in one way. The reality, I've come to realize after playing with these things quite a lot recently, is that they're simply 'higher-resolution'. For instance, I have watched this brick (from a Star Wars ship) http://cosmicbricks.ecrater.com/p/11804345/lego-dark-bluish-gray-brick http://cosmicbricks.ecrater.com/p/11804345/lego-dark-bluish-... become variously, a foot, an ear, a beak, part of a dragon's wing, part of a temple, part of half a dozen spaceships of completely bespoke design, part of some sort of epic death dealing mechanized tank/robot thing, and probably several more models where I didn't even notice it. Whereas I had to be content with "8-bit" round shapes with my old Lego brick pieces, my children and I are able to produce models with much higher resolution - and that're pretty satisfying. My kids play with these "model" kits by building them as per the instructions, learning a few new construction techniques in the process, playing with the finished model for a day or two, then tearing them apart and applying any new techniques they discovered into their constantly evolving storyline. Just like Dad did... does...
- shin_lao 15y agoI think he forgot you can now order whatever LEGO piece you are looking for online. So basically LEGO tries to sell to people who will not hack on the LEGO with very cool models but provides formidable tools if you want to hack your own LEGO. You can even submit your own models if I'm correct.
- tomkinstinch 15y agoYeah, LEGO's CAD software lets you design models and then order all of the requisite parts[1]. I haven't used it yet, it's a really cool idea. So there are unfortunate movie-themed prefab kits for the masses, and powerful design software for creative folks. LEGO still sells bulk quantities of classic bricks, you just have to look a bit. 1. http://ldd.lego.com/ http://ldd.lego.com/
- ahi 15y agoGot one of the castle themed products for a friend. The LEGO approved story: "The Dragon Knights have captured the fair princess and locked her in their tower. The King’s brave Knight sets forth to rescue her, but the tower is heavily fortified and well defended. Can he break through the iron gate and past the catapult to free her?" I think my friend decided to retheme as an S&M brothel.
- duke_sam 15y agoI just bought a couple of the Builders of Tomorrow Set #6177. All regular pieces, no tie-in or specialist parts. Expand with a couple of specific sets for the minifigs or custom pieces and you are set. If you are lucky enough to live near a Lego store you can also expand the collection using the wall of bricks. I've never liked the Lego kits (even as a kid) for the reasons already mentioned. You build them once and then the (building) creativity is gone. Give me a pile of 4x2 bricks any day.
- firefoxman1 15y agoI don't think they're evil so much as just catering to modern society. Legos are from an era where way more people built, fixed, and tinkered with things. Nowadays what do you do when your computer, phone, dishwashers, tv, etc. breaks? Take it to get repaired or get a new one. No tinkering, no opening it up to see how it works before you throw it away, none of that. So rather than thinking Lego is to blame for this attitude, I think Lego is just following their market. And can you really blame a company for wanting to stay afloat instead of following a shrinking breed of people and a idealistic mindset into the grave?
- rokhayakebe 15y agoDoes LEGO have some sort of patent on "legos"? In other words are other companies allowed to build similar kits?
- mtts 15y agoNot anymore: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/lego-loses-trademark-battle-2079389.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/lego-loses-t... It used to be no one could manufacture bricks that were compatible with real legos, but now, apparently, you can. So if Lego insists on creating only crap merchandise prefab kits (like they have for at least the last ten years or so), someone else can step up and produce something a little more, well, Lego-y.
- rubinelli 15y agoI'm pretty sure they have design patents that prevent other companies from building bricks that are an exact copy. But design patents, as shown from Apple vs. Samsung, are a positively grey area. It's not clear if "compatible" parts would be allowed, for example.
- sethg 15y agoAny patent LEGO might have claimed on the basic brick design must have expired long ago. MegaBlocks makes bricks that are advertised as compatible with LEGO bricks, but in my experience the tolerance is just a little bit off.
- BenSS 15y agoYeah, they sorta work, but even my 4yo can immediately tell a mega block from a real Lego. They've all been banished from the logo bin.
- maximusprime 15y agoMegablocks are awful. They stick together for a second, then pop off. You end up with cracks everywhere and pieces falling apart. Do not buy...
- archangel_one 15y ago
- bryanlarsen 15y agoI'm having trouble understanding the backlash against the new Lego for girls initiative. As the father of a couple of pre-school girls, I'm loving the new initiative. It appears to consist of 3 things: - realistic looking minifigs. Not square and not oversexed. - additional brick colors, and not just pink. - sets not based on movie tie-ins, but in real-world locations like an inventor's workshop, a café, an animal hospital and a beauty salon These look like the perfect toys for young girls -- they encourage both creativity and role-playing. And as the latest science-based parenting books (Welcome to Your Child's Brain, etc) tell you, role-playing is the best way to develop self-control, which is the most valuable skill that can be imparted into a pre-schooler by a parent. Sure, they're girly. So what? I want my girls to grow up proud to be girls, and aware that they can be whatever they want to be. But to my mind, they seem better than most of the "boy" Lego sets out there, which appear to be much less repurposable, and are blatant commercial tie-ins or weapons of war.
- dgabriel 15y agoIt's the hard gender division. Why are there "girl legos," and "boy legos"? And it also seems like they're offering the same "girl themed" play sets that all the other toys offer, except you have to put it together first. Who plays with lego that way?
- cschmidt 15y agoI think my 4 year old girl is going to greatly prefer their new legos. Right now, she plays with Duplos, and all is well. However, I can see a day when legos are "too boy". That's just what they reported happening in the Lego studies. Duplo works, and then the girls doen't make the transition to regular lego. We have an older boy as well, and so our house has every lego you can imagine, plus lots of really cool vehicles, trucks, etc. Our daughter never goes near them. If this can make them more attractive to her, that's fantastic.
- dgabriel 15y agoInteresting. We have a 9yo boy, and twin 2 yo girls. So we have all the lego stuff, plus lego designer on the computer, etc. The girls LOVE getting into their brother's stuff, and one of them sleeps with a toy garbage truck (she also sleeps with a bus pass, a collection of stuffed puppies, and an Olivia board book...) It may be because I'm interested in this stuff, too, because they're too young to have "girl" vs "boy" divisions, or because they're just different. It's hard to tell. I do know that when I was a girl, I loved lego, and had a huge collection of matchbox cars (also my little ponies...).
- tomjen3 15y agoBefore you complain, you can still get a big bag of Lego: http://shop.lego.com/en-DK/LEGO-Basic-Bricks-Large-5623 http://shop.lego.com/en-DK/LEGO-Basic-Bricks-Large-5623 I say still, because it is a family business and it seems those who would have gone on to run it have left the family tradition and are now much more interested in enjoying their wealth (which is considerable, in that they are one of the richest families in Denmark). They would be the fourth generation, so I guess it was bound to happen. At least my children should be able to cut their teeth on Legos.
- samstave 15y agoWhomever decided to kill Space Legos needs to be shot into orbit. The model kits all suck. I went and bought $15 tubs of the wall of bricks recently and my kids get far more use from those random pieces than they do kits.
- joezydeco 15y agoI hear ya. Space Legos were the first sets I really came to love. Although, I got pissed back then because of those odd specially-formed pieces like the engines. NOW, it seems 80% of a lego kit is special pieces.
- MartinCron 15y agoI've heard this complaint for years and years, but we're living in a golden age for non-specially-formed pieces. You can buy the builder sets, order arbitrary quantities of pieces online, or just buy by the bucket at Lego stores (that's what I do).
- joezydeco 15y agoWhat do you think about Bionicle? I can't even consider that stuff to be LEGO.
- MartinCron 15y agoI can't get in to Bionicle, but I'm not offended that it exists.
- mhartl 15y agoA bit OT, but a fun exercise: every time you see the word "millennium", count how many "n"s there are. The answer is "one" an astonishing amount of the time, even in professionally edited copy. In fact, as of this writing the Google search for "Millennium Falcon" brings up an Amazon ad for—you guessed it—a "Lego Millenium [sic] Falcon". (Full confession: Around 2000, I was mortified to discover that I, a card-carrying spelling Nazi, had been misspelling it for years.) N.B. You can remember the right spelling by recalling that a millennium is a thousand (mille) years (anni).
- tlrobinson 15y agoI was also dismayed by their focus on movie tie-ins and set-specific pieces, but I really like the LEGO landmark/architecture series: http://architecture.lego.com/en-us/products/ http://architecture.lego.com/en-us/products/ They're built with pretty much all standard pieces (though not necessarily standard colors).
- bryanlarsen 15y agoChristmas present score! Now I have a Christmas present idea for my wife to compliment the far-too-functional present already got her!
- cstross 15y agos/LEGO/toy manufacturers/ (There, I fixed it for you!) The trend towards highly gendered media-tie in toys that are designed to generate follow-on sales opportunities for accessories rather than to encourage kids to develop their imagination through semi-structured but open-ended play nauseates me. I am doubtless betraying my personal bias here, but the corporate discovery that the quickest way to a parent's wallet is through their offspring is a bleakly exploitative example of market amorality; it may be legal, but is it decent?
- pfarrell 15y agoHasn't this always been the case... the marketing influence, I mean? I've gone to the Lego store in my town. You can still assemble a nice set outside of the movie tie-in stuff. Now, whether you can get you kids to think that's cooler or not? That's the real problem. IIRC, Lego was on verge of bankruptcy in the early 2000's and had to figure out a way to get kids to keep buying. We're witnessing the same type of turnaround Apple had. We snort at this one, though, because we've constructed memories of childhood that remove the marketing we now see as adults.
- sliverstorm 15y agowe've constructed memories of childhood that remove the marketing we now see as adults You're telling me this: http://www.innovationinpractice.com/.a/6a00e54ef4f37688340133f18b47f8970b-800wi http://www.innovationinpractice.com/.a/6a00e54ef4f3768834013... Is a piece of marketing? Because that & similar pieces was 95% of what I used.
- pfarrell 15y agoThat's the product, not the way it was sold. That product is still available. My nephews are guilty of the same build the set and chuck it type behaviors. I've got my own son and daughter interested in the building aspect. I remember looking a the awesome pictures of what you could build with the Technics sets (this is way before Mindstorms). That was me being marketed to. I wanted those sets without knowing anyone that owned one or having ever seen one outside of the adverts. That's being marketed to.
- kellishaver 15y agoThe top items on my daughter's (she's 9) Christmas list this year are the LEGO Space Center and LEGO Space Shuttle, both from the City collection. Other items on the list included some of the Alien Conquest sets. The kid's got a ton of LEGO. The last thing she needs is more LEGO, but it's hands-down her favorite toy. She builds the sets and will play with/admire them for a while, then eventually all of the pieces get dumped into the Giant Bucket of LEGO, which is a huge 30gal bucket overflowing with bricks from sets we've bought her, and from my childhood and my husband's childhood (though oddly lacking in wheels). That's the beauty of LEGO and that huge mish-mash of a dozen sets works for any gender. Maybe it's the fact that I already have a geek child who's into geek things (She's also getting a D&D red box this Christmas, per her request), but the marketing doesn't seem to have any effect on her. She just sees sets that she thinks looks cool and wants to buy them. I don't think that list would include veterinary clinics and pet spas from this new pinkification effort, either.... but even if it does, so what? You still end up with a bucket of mixed pieces for hours of endless, free-form creativity and building. I do think that there are more sets available these days that are targeted toward boys, but I don't know that it's come at the expense of other options. You can still buy basic brick sets. There are still several items in the City series that aren't "cops and robbers" and things like the Mars Mission and Pharaoh's sets, or even the Harry Potter sets are no more boy-centric than the old LEGO space stuff used to be.
- code_duck 15y agoWhile I vastly prefer the open-ended building blocks to the themed sets, I did like the semi-generic Lego space theme as a child. Also very cool were Tente, a Spanish space themed building kit series... they were very futurist and stylish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tente_(Toys) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tente_(Toys) The more open ended toys clearly have an advantage in terms of creativity, and most children have creativity to spare.
- bad_user 15y agoIt's simple - universal construction kits don't do well in commercials targeted at children. The very ad he's mentioning targets parents not children. Marketing for toys used to be targeted at parents. But not anymore - there are cartoon TV stations airing all day, filled with commercials for shitty toys. Then the child sees these toys in stores and starts crying. Parent gives up and buys them. End of story.
- krupan 15y agoFunny thing is, that's not new. When I was a kid, nearly all the cartoons I watched were basically just commercials for toys (G.I. Joe, He-man, Transformers, M-m-m-mask). Same for my little sisters (My Little Ponies, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, Jem). Legos were the only toys that didn't tie-in to a movie or TV show.
- veyron 15y agoI disagree. I think, with many of the new sets, a whole class of new pieces were explored. As a kid, the only cars I really remember were the ones with the small base (3x4 with an elevated segment for the tiny wheels). When I rediscovered legos, I noticed that many sets have larger base plates (for larger vehicles) -- width 6 stubs. And the pick-a-brick are surprisingly deep in terms of shapes and sizes (I definitely don't remember the curved translucent pieces designed to emulate glass).
- maximusprime 15y agoThis is really really really boring. Yes LEGO make LEGO "sets" that make a specific model. They also make a ton of generic building sets which teach you a ton of stuff. They even have walls of bricks in the shops where you can pick and choose which individual bricks you need. If you don't like the specific building sets, don't buy those ones. Every so often some people start moaning about how Lego is not the same as it was in their day. Stop whining. (I've been a massive Lego fan for the last 30 years). Oh and AWESOME NEWS! New DC sets coming in January! Now we can have Batman Lego sets again!!!!!
- blhack 15y agoJust stop buying lego and start buying K-nex instead. They are almost infinitely better. They are incredibly open ended, and can be used to build some very complex stuff.
- diamondhead 15y agodefinitely agree with that. k'nex is way more creative.
- nostromo 15y agoWhen I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task. For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music? It's easy to blame the companies -- but in reality it's very hard for a single company to change the macro culture that informs their product decisions. If you want to find the root cause, look at the users and ask why they demand the products they do. In this case: "why are so few parents buying Legos for their girls?" or "why do girls feel a stigma about playing with Legos?"
- pbreit 15y agoIt's much easier for a single company to make some changes than it is for a single or even very large group of consumers to drive a change. It stinks, but every complaint about products asks for an Apple comparison. I would say both Apple and Pixar have demonstrated that sticking to the purity of your craft can be both fulfilling and extremely lucrative.
- maximusprime 15y agoYou assume people want a change. I do not think they do. Do people want an end to gender specific toys? Certainly some do. But the vast majority do not. I firmly believe, through interacting with people in general, and my own children, that female and male brains are completely different. They are hard wired to like different things, and behave differently. I don't see anything wrong with that, and don't see any reason to pretend there aren't those differences.
- pbreit 15y agoI was referring to the broader argument, not just the gender aspect. And, yes, I think people do want change. This is proven by the success of Apple and Pixar who both reject a lot of commercial demands.
- kghose 15y agoOh, BTW, I just had to share this guy's work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshal-banana/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshal-banana/ Especially his sand crawler. I really liked that http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshal-banana/sets/72157626809606992/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshal-banana/sets/72157626809...
- RexRollman 15y agoAm I the only one who would love to have a real, life-size set of Legos, big enough to build an actual dwelling? That would be a dream come true.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- neovive 15y agoHere are some HN perspectives from 2009 (when Lego announced a large increase in profits (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=768093 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=768093). The article is no longer available on Yahoo Finance, but can be found here (http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news9940.html http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news9940.html). Branded, themed Lego sets simply sell really well and Lego is responding to the demand with increased capacity and more focus on these markets. Here is a scenario of why it works: Visualize a parent and child walking down the toy aisle at a typical large retailer (e.g. Target, WalMart, ToysRUs, etc.). The shelves are full of dozens of single-focus, low cost, electronic toys that are flashy and are very appealing to kids. A big box of Lego bricks just doesn't provide the same instant gratification as a talking toy with a "demo" button. Although, the long-term value of the box of Lego bricks is clearly much higher, explaining that to a 4 year-old is very difficult as they are concurrently making a strong appeal for, an even cheaper, talking doll. Lego has responded with purchasing shelf space in retailers for branded sets that offer instant gratification while also satisfying the parents need for a more creative toy. Regardless, most of the pieces from the branded sets end of in the "big box" of Legos :).
- mhartl 15y agoYou've nailed it on the head. Virtually all criticisms of this nature can be summarized as "Humans often want things that aren't best for them." Unfortunately, putting anyone else in charge of people's preferences usually ends up being even worse than letting them decide for themselves.
- amirmc 15y agoIt's not Lego that's "highly-problematic". They're simply trying to give the kids(parents?) of today what they want. If you follow the NPR article linked in the article, you'll see that Lego clearly did their homework before embarking on this new line. In light of this, I think it's odd for them to be accused of reinforcing stereotypes when their research showed that this is how (most) girls like to play. I do think it's sad that we now have 'boy-lego' and 'girl-lego', but (for the moment), that appears to be appropriate for the world we live in. Maybe some of those girls will want to do more than just play with handbrushes and handbags and check out the Technics or Mindstorms. Who knows. NPR article: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/15/143724644/ith-new-toys-lego-hopes-to-build-girls-market http://www.npr.org/2011/12/15/143724644/ith-new-toys-lego-ho... LEGO product lines: http://www.lego.com/en-us/products/default.aspx http://www.lego.com/en-us/products/default.aspx
- berberich 15y agoHere's the article (Businessweek) amirmc is referring to: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142011.html http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/lego-is-for-gir...
- po 15y agoI read through this article the other day and it does a great job of showing the position Lego has worked themselves into and how they're trying to right the ship. I think it is commendable that they are trying to go after the girl market with something other than princesses. I didn't like the new 'ladyfigs' at all at first either but then again, I was a little boy and I loved the minifigs. The part about boys playing with minifies in the third person but girls wanting to play in the first person really resonated with me. I never pretended that I was a minifig. If that's what I wanted to do, they should have had more individual personality. Like what they came up with. I think the fact that they are willing to break from tradition to capture this market is a good thing. The fact that it doesn't appeal to me is probably also a sign they're doing it right.
- amirmc 15y agoJust spoke my gf. She's doing grad research on children's play and is actually (partially) funded by Lego. I'll just quote her (but bear in mind that it's a soundbite - there's likely a whole PhD in boy/girl play behaviour). "Generally speaking, boys will happily construct just for the sake of it and although girls will also build things, for them there's no point if they can't breath life into it."
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- wgrover 15y agoLEGO's "Creationary" game always gives me pause. I suppose it's 3D "Pictionary" but the name makes me think it'll be about disproving evolution... http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Creationary-3844 http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Creationary-3844
- gus_massa 15y agoI don’t know how to fix this for the whole society, but it is possible to fix this for your daughter: Go and buy a generic Lego set, for example http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_355233462_11?ie=UTF8&node=676116011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-4&pf_rd_r=0RQYV84C0HDR52FEB66E&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1337709102&pf_rd_i=236510011 http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_355233462_11?ie=UTF8... The same rule applies for yours nieces. And for the (female) friends of your children (If you really want to look more normal, you can buy the "pink" box.). My 9 years old daughter has: * Her own chemistry set * An "X-100" microscopy (It is really of my wife.) * A Meccano-like metalic cosnstruction set. * A Snap Circuits Jr electronic Set. And this year, one of her "Christmas" present is an Arduinos Sparkfun Professional Inventor's Kit, because she wants to make a robot, but she didn’t want a robot kit. (I still don’t know we will complete the robot, but the idea is to start with something simple and iterate.) If you think that it is important to give your daughter a good scientific formation (or if you think that it is the only sensible way to raise a children), you can fight back. To see another example, go to the Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show! : http://sylviashow.com/ http://sylviashow.com/
- tristan_louis 15y agoThis is, unfortunately, part of a trend against "make" culture. While it does impact LEGO (the tie-in stuff is pretty useless and the LEGO city sets still have more wholesome brick sets that can be used in more than one fashion), it is going on across many facet of toy manufacturing. Those of us who are parents of young children now may remember the days in school when they taught us basic programming as part of computer training (either logo or basic, for example) which put us on the path to learning how to get the computer to do stuff we wanted it to do instead of consuming pre-made stuff on it. In today's world, a large amount of what's offered to kids is stuff that tied in to TV shows or movies, with little interest in helping develop the next generation of makers. Sadly, LEGO's initial downfall was because it try to keep on focusing on the makers and its resurgence was on the back of pre-made, pre-imagined tools: when a kid is given a star wars or harry potter set, he/she is now letting his/her imagination run wild but is constrained by the pre-established story lines set in place by Hollywood (because let's face it, the tie-ins are to movies, not books). The sad part is that the long term impact of this may be that it creates grown-ups further down the line who will feel that laws like SOPA are OK.
- thejteam 15y agoI was thinking the other day how much I really miss GW-Basic. A relatively simple set of instructions that I used at age 10 or so to start simple programming. How do I teach a 10 year old to program now? Class instantiation? Grab a bunch of libraries off the internet and put them together? Really sad that people don't want to build things anymore. I recently fenced in my acre yard(no I don't live in SV, couldn't afford an acre over there). Six foot privacy fence. Took me months. Everybody thought I was crazy, including the guy next door who makes a living doing commercial construction. My wife's friends thought she was crazy. They would never let their husbands keep construction materials around that long. But I remember my dad building a fence years ago when I was a kid so it just seemed natural I would do it as well.
- einhverfr 15y agoI am starting my son with perl and C. Today is his 8th birthday. Why perl and C? 1) Perl is very good at ad hoc programming, and it;s a very good language for learning very basic things..... 2) C is simple language for very basic stuff, but it is exacting and makes you think like a programmer. Once he gets half-way decent with simple things in Perl, he's ready for Lego Mindstorms ;-)
- oz 15y ago" But if they’ve become toys marketed to a single gender, then we’re just reproducing the already awful gender imbalance in STEM education and employment." Why is it we never hear anyone decrying the 'awful gender imbalance' in Human Resources, Nursing and Teaching?
- dgabriel 15y agoBecause you're in technology. There are a number of organizations dedicated to increasing the number of men in nursing and teaching.
- tikhonj 15y agoBecause this is "Hacker" news so there is a very strong bias towards science and engineering. I imagine it might be different on a Nursing forum, but I've never seen one so I don't actually know.
- philwelch 15y agoBecause when women dominate the workplace, it's "The End of Men" (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-...) and reason for smug, thinly-veiled gloating. Also, men can't be teachers because we're all pedophiles.
- billpatrianakos 15y agoEh, they don't make 'me like they used to, right? I hardly think LEGO is promoting gender stereotypes. The new girl products and what they sell to boys aren't the problem but a symptom of a larger disease. Gender stereotypes are created within cultures and companies like LEGO don't really have an agenda like people would try to have us think. Instead they market what sells. The culture at large has put boys and girls into their respective roles and companies simply ride the trends. If boys were supposed to be in flowers and wear underwear on their heads then they'd make little Lego flower kits that came with little Lego men with underwear as hats. Companies have to look out for their share holders. If gender stereotypes are the norm then that's what they'll sell. If we, as a culture, change those stereotypes the companies will follow. It's great to be able to commend a company for taking the lead on such issues but we can hardly expect it. That change has to come from families first.
- emp_ 15y agoI buy legos 1-2 a year for my four girls, I never get anything with themes tho. Only basic blocks and let their skills do the rest, you'd be amazed what they can do.
- jkeel 15y agoMy daughter loves legos and seems to really love the Harry Potter legos. I do agree that getting generic legos instead of boy centric seems more challenging but they are out there. What I really connected with more in this article was the advent calendar with the cops and robbers. My wife told me a while back, "I got this cool lego advent calendar online". I was like, "cool!". Then I saw this cops and robbers theme and I told her, "Is this really what Christmas is about in the US now? <santa voice>Hey kids! Be careful out there as there are people that want to break into your house and steal your stuff!</santa voice>" I know, I know... If I don't like it then don't buy it. I agree. I still think it's a strange advent calendar even though my son actually likes it.
- brc 15y agoThe cops and robbers theme is really just a play on the good v. evil theme that permeates most childrens books, stories, movies, etc. I think it's pretty benign and just part of the process of helping kids make sense of the world through play and storytelling.
- vacri 15y agoThis is not new. When I was growing up with lego in the early 80s, there was a line of lego marketed at girls which were sets of lego that you made jewelery with. Also, what nonsense is this that you won't make anything with the millenium falcon because 1000 pieces is too many? What garbage. How can lego possibly fix the issue that you refuse to make anything else with a set with lots of pieces? Anyway, lego sets aren't atomic - buy a lego set, play with it, then mix it with your other stuff. You've just waxed lyrical about an ad where you can 'just make stuff', right after refusing to do so with a large set, with no real reason given.
- harryf 15y agoSide note but the ultimate evil present for parents of small kids is to buy the kid a Playmobil Castle for Christmas - http://www.amazon.com/Lion-Knights-Castle-by-Playmobil/dp/B003AQBWCG/ http://www.amazon.com/Lion-Knights-Castle-by-Playmobil/dp/B0... As a parent that spent over 16 hours assembling one last Christmas then watching it disintegrate again, the "joy" this gift brings cannot be described. A great present if you have a brother or sister with kids you feel compelled to annoy.
- ianb 15y agoAh, but remember this castle? http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jX9QklC3G4E/TIRfrl9uVRI/AAAAAAAADK4/0uiWlR8TNBk/s400/complete-vintage-fisher-price-little-people-castle-993_170521510950.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jX9QklC3G4E/TIRfrl9uVRI/AAAAAAAADK... That was one really great toy.
- jacquesm 15y agoI'm an equal-opportunity lego distributor. Girls as well as Boys get just one kind of toy from me: Lego. Duplo for the urchins, 'regular' for 4 to 8's and technic for the older ones. Never seen a kid turn it down, whatever age or gender. For a lark I gave a bunch of it to some adults, claiming that I'd forgotten their birth dates. They ended up being at least as happy as the kids. I've never given any 'themed' lego, just the plain stuff, no minifigs or other non constructive bits. Lego is what made me see the power of building using re-usable blocks, the best possible primer for becoming a programmer that I am aware of outside of maths (and you typically don't start math beyond counting when you're a toddler).
- seagreen 15y agoI'd like to make a point that applies to some (but by no means all) of the comments above. Outrage isn't a very useful emotion. It's become the default emotion for things like this because politicians like to keep people in a state of frothy indignation. That's carried over to the rest of our culture but it's not a good thing. Resolve is a much better emotion than outrage. What can I do to encourage better behavior? Buying good LEGO sets as presents for children and evangelizing about LEGO to friends spring immediately to mind. Or maybe getting involved with the 3D printing movement. In summary, I'm suspicious that alternating between "intellectual curiosity" and "resolving to take action" is a much better way of reading articles on the internet than the alternate strategy of alternating intellectual curiosity and outrage.
- tombell 15y agoI feel the need to point out the obvious. It's LEGO not LEGOS or legos.
- brc 15y agoPet peeve number 1 for me. There is no plural. 'Mum gave me a LEGO set' 'I want to go and play with my LEGO' 'I have a big tub full of LEGO pieces' This was the official statement by the company: "LEGO® is a brand name that is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely appreciate your help in keeping it special by referring to our bricks as "LEGO Bricks or Toys" and not just "LEGOS". By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand that stands for quality the world over."
- ugh 15y agoThis is not a new development. Lego has had sets loudly targeting girls (or better: stereotypes about girls) since 1991. Lego Paradisa set where sold all through the 90s. Here is the Poolside Paradiese from 1992: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6416-1 http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6416-1 The Lego Belville sets are similar and are still sold today. Here is the Pony Trekking set from 1997: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5854-1 http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5854-1 It’s possible to go even further back in time for more stunning displays of sexism. In 1971 many sets had photos of kids on them. There was a boy pushing a truck or putting together a car. Now guess what the only sets with girls on them were. A kitchen and a living room: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=261-4 http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=261-4 All that does’t make it better. Yes, this is a problem that has to be remedied. But it is not a recent development. In general I have to say that Lego improved massively since the dark ages (late 90s and early 2000s). I was just looking at some new Lego Creator sets and blown away by them. You couldn’t get cool stuff like that during my (late) childhood (i.e. late 90s and early 2000s). I still loved the heck out of Lego during my childhood but today’s sets are just cooler.
- MikeMacMan 15y agoI don't besmirch LEGO for doing what is an entirely rational for them: design products whose pieces, like puzzle pieces, don't have much versatility outside the context of that playset, leading children to tire of them quickly and want a new set. Of course, LEGO still sells the general-purpose sets with instruction books to show you how to construct dozens of different buildings/vehicles/etc. My son prefers those, but every kid is different. The No Girls Allowed theme is pretty easy to explain: mass-market films of the type that will have product tie-ins are almost universally aimed at boys, and LEGO is simply downstream from that trend. There are toys that give kids' imaginations some exercise, and there are those that, like video games and Harry Potter LEGO sets, don't deliver quite the same workout. It's up to you to cultivate in your child a healthy appetite for the former. EDIT: I would add that the Toy Story movies do a good job of echoing the nostalgia that adults feel for those older, simpler toys. My son and my affection for those movies has in some way conditioned us to stretch our imaginations and breathe new life into old toys.
- ja27 15y agoMy daughter grew up with LEGO and still plays with them. She doesn't need pink or purple blocks or over-sized female figures. All she wants different is a few female minifigs once in a while. I don't think there is a single one in either advent calendar. There are almost none anymore except Hermione in the Harry Potter licensed sets. Somewhat ironically, one of the few we have is the female doctor from last season's FIRST LEGO League competition set.
- codergirl 15y agoThis is offensive, I will just have to stick with my computer engineer barbie instead: http://gizmodo.com/5470587/computer-engineer-barbie-has-a-phd-in-fun-and-breaking-down-stereotypes http://gizmodo.com/5470587/computer-engineer-barbie-has-a-ph...
- draggnar 15y agoin america this is called having a niche
- alanh 15y agoI Made Things with LEGO blocks growing up. I loved the kits and the space themes. But I would always end up creating my own spaceship. My young sisters build… but they mostly just build very simple props and then play with the LEGO people like dolls, inventing dramas and friendships and the like. It’s the same set of LEGO bricks I used. Is it evil to recognize this?
- commieneko 15y agoI've been a Lego fan for, what, 45, 50 years? I've never in that time bought a single "kit" from them. You buy bricks. And other parts. But kits? Why would I want to build someone else's design. The whole idea behind Lego, as I've understood since I was 5 years old, is that you make your own cool stuff. I've built space ships and air planes and monsters. I think I even built a Starship Enterprise once. But designing the things yourself is part of the process. When my nieces were prime Lego age, at the advice of their mother, I did look at some kits, but was horrified at the prices. The bricks are pricy enough. I converted my money into tubs of bulk bricks. You can never have enough bricks. (Now I did make some Tinker-Toy machines from company plans, but only enough to understand the principle. I then adapted them to my own nefarious purposes. I did the same with balsa wood flying model airplanes later.)
- jacobr 15y agoIf you want random bricks or just don't care to spend a fortune, look for used Lego and Duplo (big Legos) and just run it through the dish washer.
- kin 15y agoSo I played the Lego board game series Heroica recently and at first I thought it was brilliant. It's pretty much a simplified version of D&D where you build the map with Legos. Then at the end I realized that the game-play pieces were set specific and you couldn't do what I thought was the point. What I thought was that you could use any lego piece you want and add it to the set and use any lego figure and add it to the set and simply follow the same gameplay mechanics to a map limited only by your imagination. Let's play Heroica with Harry Potter pieces. Nope can't do that. You have to purchase their overpriced sets and only play what the sets let you do. Looks like they're just looking for cash based off of numbers. Bummer.
- joejohnson 15y agoThere are LEGO advent calendars!? That is so cool. I'm definitely getting one next year.
- twodayslate 15y agoWhat is wrong with Nerf? I love the new stuff they put out. I would have loved a Nerf Sword when I was a kid!
- aaronmorey 15y agoMy questions is, what changed about Nerf? I'm not all that old, but most Nerf guns today just seem to be more powerful and more stylized versions of what they were making when I was a kid.
- rglover 15y ago“With New Toys, Lego Hopes To Build Girls Market.” That, right there, is the problem. The people making the toys don't find value in making children happy or inspiring them to be creative/innovative; when all is said and done, girls are just another market.
- acabal 15y agoI've actually had similar thoughts about Lego in the past. When I was younger I used to love playing with the generic "space" Legos or the generic "castle" legos. Looking back, it was great because those sets where generic enough that you could imagine your own story for them. You wouldn't just be building sets, you'd be building universes. Much of that is lost with movie-themed Legos. If a kid sees Star Wars and then goes to get the Star Wars Lego set, then the Luke Skywalker figure will always be Luke Skywalker, and the Vader figure will always be Vader, and you'll always need a Millenium Falcon around to join the party. Media tie-ins seem to greatly restrict (though of course not totally destroy) the potential for a kid to make up his own adventure. The universe is already imagined for you; in a sense, you become a participant, not a creator.
- toast76 15y agoI don't get it. You complain that a 5000 piece lego set is movie themed, when the only thing movie themed are the minifigs and the box it came in. As kids every single lego set we had was built into the "model" precisely once, and then dumped in with the rest of the lego. We kept the instructions, but would never rebuild the original set. That's hardly the point of Lego. As an adult I have a huge collection of Star Wars lego sets, including the Imperial Star Destroyer and Death Star. When my son is old enough (he's not yet 3), they'll get dismantled and put in a bucket all together. From that day on they WILL be generic lego pieces. The fact that they came in a Star Wars box is then irrelevant.
- stinkytaco 15y agoExcept so many of those pieces are not generic. There's dozens of color and shape specific pieces in there. Things that will never go on anything else. That said, you can still buy generic lego boxes.
- toast76 15y agoNo, actually. These days there are very few non-generic pieces. If we're talking bionicles, then yes. But 99% of pieces in any modern set (branded or otherwise) are generic. The exception is usually things like fighter windshields (if they're called that in space?). e.g. The Star Destroyer engines are actually wheels presumably borrowed from some other set. The Death Star as far as I can tell has no "special" pieces, nor the AT-AT, AT-ST or X-wing. The millenium falcon has a few special bits, but even they look repurposed from some other set.
- einhverfr 15y agoExcept so many of those pieces are not generic. That you think these pieces will never go with anything else shows you aren't thinking about what you can do with them, only what they are intended to be. Thats the beauty of lego and imagination. The piece can be anything you want it to be. Is it the exhaust of a spaceship or the ear of an alien space monster? You decide!
- betageek 15y agoLego's patent on the basic block design has run out so it's actually a pretty smart strategy of Lego to move to licensed properties over the last decade - what else could they do? I've already seen some Hello Kitty "minifigs" with Lego compatible blocks, that's just the tip of the iceberg. http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-day-lego.html http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-day-l...
- hugs 15y agoLEGO is very closed source. I'm fixing that with my http://bitbeam.org http://bitbeam.org project. It's an open source hardware Lego Technic compatible building toy that you can manufacture yourself. (I lasercut my bitbeams at TechShop in San Francisco.) My long term plan is to make a bitbeam-based CNC milling machine that can make more beams. I won't just sell the "bricks", I'll open source and sell the machines that make the bricks. Opening up the manufacturing process is something I suspect LEGO would never do. Also, I'd like to see a fully open source equivalent to Mindstorms - Arduino for the electronics and Bitbeam for the mechanics.
- littlenag 15y agoI've been extremely sad the past 5 years with lego. I graduated college in 2006 and when I got a real job I thought that for Christmas I would be getting my niece and nephew legos. I loved them growing up (technic for the win!) and wanted to get them started on this obsession as well. But try as I might the trend that I saw start when I was 10 or 12 has continued to almost completely corrupt what I recall lego as being. No longer is it a where you get to imagine and design, and then play, all the "work" of design and imagination has been removed leaving only the "play". That's all kids want right, to play? Aw well, at least I got to have some good times.
- zyb09 15y agoBuy the right thing for your daughter, that you think will influence her in the right way? How come the responsibility to raise a child lies not in the parents anymore, but rather in companys and what they want to sell to them. Nothing is stopping you from dumping a big pile of mixed LEGO pieces in her room for christmas.
- mkramlich 15y agotwo reactions: 1. yes and after you buy that specific-model-guns-ships set you can (b) build anything you want with it; (b) build model put on shelf never touch (or play with it); (c) build model then tear it apart and use pieces to make something from your imagination, etc. there are no rules. there are both generic brick-like pieces and special-purpose pieces and they can be put together in literally millions of ways, and now you can even see and share photos on the web, both for ideas and showing off. 2. girls really are different from boys, overall, and in the general case; I've lost track of the number of males I've known that like/liked LEGO and the number of girls/women that were like, "meh"; and I've seen first-hand, with my own eyes, over and over again, that my young nieces LOVE to play with dolls and dresses and princesses and jewelry, whereas LEGO's and guns? meh LEGO is like a shining beacon in a sea of sludge and noise, in terms of educational value for kids and long-term replayability into adulthood, compared to most other toys. Criticizing LEGO is a bit like criticizing Michael Jordan for missing some shots in a game. It's Michael Jordan, mmkay? Instructions show you how to build what's on the box. You are not required to do that, nor are you even required to buy LEGO at all.
- gavanwoolery 15y ago<sarcasm> Wait...a toy that is oriented primarily towards boys? It must be evil! </sarcasm> In that case, Barbie is evil, GI Joe is evil, Transformers are evil, My Little Pony is evil, etc...
- rmc 15y agoYes, a toy that teaches bad things is evil. Bad things including: "You are a boy, you must be tough and strong" or "You are a girl you must be pretty and not good at maths"
- batiudrami 15y agoI think you're confusing 'evil' with 'takes reasonable actions to ensure that it, as a company, is as profitable as possible'.
- trout 15y agoThey've also got the 'Creator' line which is more of what I traditionally think of Lego. So, when I bought a set that's the one I chose. Now, I did have to wade through the other 30 brands to find it, but I was happy they still had at least one choice. Now more people should buy these if the market wants it - but I'll agree these aren't marketed enough.
- brain5ide 15y agoLEGO used to be a brand. Now it's more of a platform.
- sceaj 15y agoMy daughter is 4. She loves LEGOs. She also loves bugs, snakes, sharks, dinosaurs, Star Wars, her train set, Barbies, princesses, fairies, puppies, and sneaking into her grandma's makeup. My son is 11 months old. He's taken a liking to cars and balls, but he also loves his sister's Barbies. Particularly, he likes to pull their hair, but I think he's drawn to the (ahem, slight) humanness they possess. They look friendly. Separating "boys' toys" from "girls' toys" is pretty much nonsense. Of course, older boys aren't going to want to play with Barbies. Not necessarily because they wouldn't enjoy it, but because they are marketed to girls, and, most importantly, they would get made fun of for doing so. Were it socially acceptable for boys to play with Barbies, I promise they would. Realize that when we're shopping for toys for my daughter, the toy store is twice as big for her, because she's not aware that she isn't supposed to like action figures and rc cars. I think the genderizing of colors is just crazy. What makes pink a "girl's color" and blue a "boy's color" ? I'm convinced it's just marking influence. Most girls' clothes are pinks and purples, and similar "girly" colors. With that, most of what my daughter wears is pink or purple. Of course she loves the colors; we drape her in them daily. She chose blue, green, and red for her bedroom, and we let her do that, instead of saying "No, no, those colors are for boys."
- djhworld 15y agoWhat I'm struggling to understand is, why are they releasing these new style girly minifigs? I always thought Lego was supposed to be gender agnostic
- ajuc 15y agoI wonder if rep-rap can print good enough lego pieces?
- gibsonf1 15y agoFor the most amazing building toy with great hackability, I highly recommend Uberstix - you can build planes that fly, boats that sail, robots, buildings, dynamic systems, catapults etc etc: http://www.uberstix.com/ http://www.uberstix.com/
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago> We will put it together once and we will play with it a lot and that will be that. It won’t get remixed, won’t get hacked. My kids have gotten their share of Star Wars and Harry Potter themed Lego over the years, and in every case the original set was eventually taken apart - usually bit by bit in a kind of salvage operation for needed parts - and incorporated into the Lego bin. Once the pieces go into general circulation, they're used to build an arbitrary collection of original ships, buildings and so on.